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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Spring Cleaning

This post is not about what you may think :)

This past weekend, my husband and I started to tackle a project we've wanted to start since we moved in. The previous owners loved the English Garden look. Everywhere in our backyard there is Ivy and river rock. I was a manicured, planned out garden. Just not my thing. I believe if you're going to spend that much time and energy on a garden, it should be producing something other than the occasional blossom to look at!

Anyway, when pulling into our driveway parking, you used to see this.

A big, overgrown mess. It doesn't look quite so bad in this photo, but the entire roof of that structure had caved in (all trellis) and the sides were on their way. The ivy was everywhere, taking over everything. There were also some sort of evergreen bushes on either side that were very shabby looking. My husband hates them. So, Sunday we spent a few hours outside together enjoying the beautiful weather. And so far we have this.

The overgrown ivy and broken trellis' are gone. Most of the bushes are gone, and they weren't easy to get out, let me tell you! It ended up being just two huge plants, one on each side, that had big branches going all over the place. And all of the branches were held down by tons of ivy. It was a little nuts, but we did pretty good. There is I think one more main branch down there, and we didn't actually dig anything up really, it wouldn't budge. Hopefully we can soon. We filled up Hubby's truck bed and then some with debris and took it to my parents where it will decompose nicely and be used in their garden. We just don't have the room!

The main structure is going to be disassembled and then used to create a nice box to cover our garbage can and recycle bins closer to the house. In it's place, my hubby wants to put a bunch of river rock that we're thinking of moving from next to the house. The area where I want to put my square foot gardens is currently covered in rock. I don't know If I want it all removed, or just moved around so I can put my squares down. If it's all gone, what will I put around the squares? I don't really want to plant grass (mostly b/c that'll mean he'll put fertilizer and weed killer on the grass right next to my garden!) and don't want to spend money on any other type of ground cover...so I don't really know what do to. Guess I should decide soon though!

Oh, and I planted some lettuce this weekend in the basement as well. The onions are sprouting nicely! I told my parents I wanted 4 2x12's for my birthday and for my dad to come and help build the boxes :) Everything's moving along nicely!

Its goin to look so weird when that comes down :) Nathan said when he drove by yesterday and seen he was like wooow that looks different :) Spoke to the 2 old ladies today they were out in their gardens plantin their seeds i guess mainly peas and beans i think i heard her tell me but they were busy all day i kinda felt guilty just layin on the lawn chair with my laptop watchin them lol... i pulled more weeds this arvo tho and pulled up the dead stuff in the veg garden. OH i used my ikea pans today.... THEY SUCK! My bread looked awesome and they got huge and then after they were done these sposed non stick bakin pans.... that i lightly oiled as they recipe says.... STUCK! after about 5 mins of cusing and yelling......and realising my kitchen windows were opened..... i have 1 loaf of bread that is all ripped up and the other loaf is still in the pan cuz i dont wanna see the awesome loaf get ripped apart! *CRY* im buyin new bread pans this wk and those ikea ones r goin to good will!! And this concludes my rant.. sorry!